Under federal laws, executive branch employees must comply with conflict-of-interest rules that guard against being influenced by personal investments, and they must curb payments from sources outside the government.  As a result, employees may have to recuse themselves from working on matters where they may have conflicts, holding certain properties or accepting money.  For example, when Henry Paulson, the former Goldman Sachs executive, became Treasury secretary in 2006, he pledged to sell about $470 million in company stock to comply with conflict-of-interest rules.  But the president and vice president were exempted from such laws, on the theory that they needed to be able to carry out their constitutional duties without restraint.  So President Trump will be able to take actions pertaining to another country even if he has business interests there.  Steve Eder  http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/12/us/politics/how-federal-ethics-laws-will-apply-to-a-trump-presidency.html?_r=0

H.R.3660 - Ethics Reform Act of 1989 101st Congress (1989-1990)  11/30/1989 Became Public Law No: 101-194.  https://www.congress.gov/bill/101st-congress/house-bill/3660

shoe-leather  adjective  Basic, old-fashioned or traditional; specifically (journalism) shoe-leather journalism or shoe-leather reporting:  journalism involving walking from place to place observing things and speaking to people, rather than sitting indoors at a desk.  Wiktionary

The Big Ten Conference (B1G), formerly Western Conference and Big Nine Conference, is the oldest Division I collegiate athletic conference in the United States.  The conference, consisting of fourteen members as of 2016, competes in the NCAA Division I; its football teams compete in the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS), formerly known as Division I-A, the highest level of NCAA competition in that sport.  The conference includes the flagship public university in each of 11 states stretching from New Jersey to Nebraska, as well as two additional public land grant schools and a private university.  The Big Ten Conference was established in 1895 when Purdue University president James H. Smart and representatives from the University of Chicago, University of Illinois, University of Michigan, University of Minnesota, Northwestern University, and University of Wisconsin gathered at Chicago's Palmer House Hotel to set policies aimed at regulating intercollegiate athletics.  In 1905, the conference was officially incorporated as the "Intercollegiate Conference Athletic Association".  The conference uses the "B1G" character combination in its branding, noting it "allows fans to see 'BIG' and '10' in a single word."  Find members, associate member, future associate member and former member at

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Ten_Conference

The Big 12 Conference is a ten-school collegiate athletic conference headquartered in Irving, Texas.  It is a member of the NCAA's Division I for all sports, except hockey; its football teams compete in the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS; formerly Division I-A), the higher of two levels of NCAA Division I football competition.  Its ten members, located in Iowa, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, and West Virginia, include eight public and two private Christian schools.  The Big 12 Conference is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization incorporated in Delaware.  The Big 12 was formerly composed of 12 schools, hence its name: it was formed in 1996 when four schools from the collapsing Southwest Conference (Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech and Baylor) joined with the pre-existing Big Eight Conference.  Oklahoma and Oklahoma State were grouped with the four newcomers in the "Big 12 South", while the remaining 6 teams of the Big 8 (Kansas, Kansas State, Colorado, Nebraska, Missouriand Iowa State) formed the "Big 12 North".  The conference's current 10-campus makeup resulted from the 2010–13 Big 12 Conference realignment, in which Nebraska joined the Big Ten Conference, Colorado joined the Pac-12, and Missouri and Texas A&M joined the Southeastern Conference.  TCU and West Virginia joined from the Mountain West and Big East Conferences respectively to offset two of the departing schools, bringing the conference to its current strength.  Find current members, affiliate members and former members at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_12_Conference

Sojourner Truth (born Isabella "Bell" Baumfree; c. 1797–1883) was an African-American abolitionist and women's rights activist.  Truth was born into slavery in Swartekill, Ulster County, New York, but escaped with her infant daughter to freedom in 1826.  She gave herself the name Sojourner Truth in 1843 after she became convinced that God has called her to leave the city and go into the countryside "testifying the hope that was in her."  Her best-known speech was delivered extemporaneously, in 1851, at the Ohio Women's Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio.  The speech became widely known during the Civil War by the title "Ain't I a Woman?," a variation of the original speech re-written by someone else using a stereotypical Southern dialect; whereas Sojourner Truth was from New York and grew up speaking Dutch as her first language.  During the Civil War, Truth helped recruit black troops for the Union Army; after the war, she tried unsuccessfully to secure land grants from the federal government for former slaves.  In 2014, Truth was included in Smithsonian magazine's list of the "100 Most Significant Americans of All Time".  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sojourner_Truth

Harriet Tubman (born Araminta "Minty" Ross; c. 1822-1913) was an American abolitionist and humanitarian.  Born into slavery, Tubman escaped and subsequently made some thirteen missions to rescue approximately seventy enslaved families and friends, using the network of antislavery activists and safe houses known as the Underground Railroad.  She later helped abolitionist John Brown recruit men for his raid on Harpers Ferry, and in the post-war era was an active participant in the struggle for women's suffrage.  After the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was passed, she helped guide fugitives farther north into British North America, and helped newly freed slaves find work.  When the Civil War began, Tubman worked for the Union Army, first as a cook and nurse, and then as an armed scout and spy.  The first woman to lead an armed expedition in the war, she guided the raid at Combahee Ferry, which liberated more than 700 slaves.  She was active in the women's suffrage movement until illness overtook her and she had to be admitted to a home for elderly African Americans that she had helped to establish years earlier.  On April 20, 2016, the U.S. Treasury Department announced a plan for Tubman to replace Andrew Jackson as the portrait gracing the $20 bill.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harriet_Tubman

You're invited to spend An Evening with Lee Child  As a special promotion, the first 400 ticket holders in attendance will get a free copy of Lee Child's latest book Night School to have signed by the author.  Wednesday, November 30, 2016 at 7 p.m.  Toledo Museum of Art Peristyle  2445 Monroe St.  $10 General Admission  $8 for Library Staff, FOL, LLF, and Literati  $5 Students  Internationally best-selling author Lee Child has more than 22 million copies of his novels in print worldwide.  A native of England and a former television director, Child lives in New York City, and is now the author of twenty Jack Reacher thrillers, including his latest, Night School, as well as seven New York Times best-sellers.  A book signing will follow Child's talk.  This event is presented by the Toledo Lucas County Public Library and the Toledo Museum of Art.  Night School and additional Lee Child titles are available at the Museum Store and in the Peristyle Lobby the night of the event.  Museum parking is $7 (free for TMA members).  The event will be interview style and followed by audience Q and A.  For more information, contact the Museum Information desk: 419.255.8000, ext. 7448 or visit ToledoMuseum.org

Ralph Branca, the pitcher who had three consecutive All-Star seasons for the Brooklyn Dodgers but who was never allowed to forget one pitch that crushed them, died November 23, 2016 in Rye Brook, N.Y.  He was 90.  The pitch was immortalized in American literature by Don DeLillo, who opened his 1997 novel, “Underworld,” with an extended, lyrical re-creation of that Wednesday at Coogan’s Bluff, complete with echoes of the radio announcer Russ Hodges’s disbelieving call as the ball headed for the fence and sailed over the Dodgers’ left fielder, Andy Pafko, culminating, as pandemonium erupted, with the joyous, repeated declaration, “The Giants win the pennant!”  Branca’s unforgivable offense (at least to Dodger fans) came on the afternoon of Oct. 3, 1951, when, in a final game with the New York Giants to determine the National League championship, he served up Bobby Thomson’s electrifying (at least to Giants fans), pennant-winning home run—the “Shot Heard Round the World”—probably the most memorable in baseball history.  Branca bore that burden without complaint even after learning a few years later that Giants players had been tipped to forthcoming pitches for much of the 1951 season through a scheme in which the Giants used a telescope in the Polo Grounds’ center-field clubhouse to pick up opposing catchers’ signals.  Details of the sign-stealing were publicly revealed by Joshua Prager in The Wall Street Journal in 2001 and in his book “The Echoing Green” in 2006.  Richard Goldstein  Read more and link to video at http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/23/sports/baseball/ralph-branca-who-gave-up-shot-heard-round-the-world-dies-at-90.html

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1556  November 28, 2016  On this date in 1829, Anton Rubinstein, Russian pianist, composer, and conductor, was born.  On this date in 1925, The Grand Ole Opry began broadcasting in Nashville, Tennessee, as the WSM Barn Dance.